The Twitter Lifecycle

How I Navigated Through it and Emerged As A Better Human Being

Hi all. I’ve been trying to fight it all year but I’ve hit the end of my natural Twitter Life. Natural Causes did me in. Now that the end is here, I’d like to share the process from a purely anecdotal perspective of someone who has tweeted 300,000 times over 8 years.

(Note: I’m not going to mention anyone directly by name but if you believe that I’m subtweeting you, then you may be right. But understand that I’m doing so with authentically loving intent. Except the gun nuts. Fuck them.)

Phase 1 - Account Creation. Why?

Like me, many of us join up for some or all of the following reasons:

• A real time approach to reading the news from a virtually unlimited number of sources
• To find a therapeutic distraction from our real world journeys
• To seek out and solicit advice from a community of people with shared experiences related to your unique circumstancess.
• To meet and interact with like minded intellectuals from diverse backgrounds so you can expand your own thinking. Become smarter at any age.
• To build social relationships with incredibly witty people so you can laugh a lot when you need that the most
• To sharpen your debate skills by engaging in vigorous dialog when you encounter discourse. If done respectfully, everyone gets smarter. Win or Lose.
• A place to publicly drop your occasional brain fart and see if it resonates.

Those who’ve experienced the entire lifecycle know that all of these goals are usually achieved but most are surprised by how Twitter fosters the creation of authentic friendships that extend to the real world. Many are even able to meet someone special without seeking this out because intimacy, trust, and assessment of character are surprisingly easy to establish on Twitter.

All of this adds up to an Internet Application that becomes addictive to the point that it becomes an alternative universe for so many of us. For sure, I’ve been obsessed with it and carried it wherever I went - often live tweeting mundane details to cope with the monotony of business travel.

But, like every thing, all of this awesomeness can’t sustain itself forever.

Phase 2 - Spectator

I’ve been obsessed with the website ever since 2008 when I set up Twitter primarily as my modern news aggregater. Then I followed my favorite sports stars, celebrities, reporters, pundits, economists, and selected ‘Twitter-Famous’ ordinary people.

As a schooled economist, myself, I found the real time interactions of conventional Friedman Vs Keynesian enthusiasts fascinating and watched in horror as the Austrian Anarchocaps found an unexpected resurgence in the wake of the Financial Crisis.

And, as a native New Yorker Liberal Elitist now living in the South, I took a disturbed fixation in witnessing Tea Party rise live on Twitter. Many of the Tea Party pioneers hailed from my area and I worked hard trying to arm my teenagers against the awfulness at school. Especially in Obama’s first 100 days, Southern High School cafeterias were breeding grounds for racism and far too many end up like this:

Thanks largely to the intellectual and fierce Progressives on Twitter, I was able to help defend my kids from the Tea Party infestation powered by FoxNews and they are now enlightened and successful young adults.

At this point, I was still strictly a spectator on Twitter with an Egg avi far too timid to expose my ignorance by typing words onto a box. Still, I stared scrolling my TL on my phone -wherever I went. And I didn’t stop for 8 years.

Phase 3 - Reaching out to Strangers

In late 2009, a dark cloud suddenly shrouded my life. As the sole breadwinner for a family of five, I quickly learned the cruelties of the American Healthcare system when my startup collapsed during the Great Recession. With two teens at home, a toddler recently diagnosed with autism, and an estranged spouse recovering from congenital heart valve replacement surgery, I felt as if I quickly descended to HELL!

I fell, within 1 year, of having a small fortune in stock options as a young infallible tech executive to receiving a COBRA Bill of $2,500/month and trying to reconcile that to my new reality of $300/week in unemployment. Suddenly, I realized that I was now responsible for insuring two family members with preexisting conditions and unless I could change the calculus here, homelessness for everyone and a permanent end to access to treatment for the two preexisting conditions in my family were imminent.

During breaks from desperately trying to string together consulting gigs and pinging everyone I knew on LinkedIn, I started following the #HCR tag and read all about how others were coping and the progress of Obama’s reform effort. I started following and tweeting with other doomed people and found the moral support soothing. Knowing it wasn’t just me helped break the tortuous isolationism.

It wasn’t just me. I was the rock at home. No chance I could signal worry to anyone I supported. The panic would traumatize the teens. On Twitter, I found that I could freak the fuck out to rave reviews. A good workout and a few Twitter rants daily kept me from a breakdown even as I realized that I was days from eviction on multiple occasions. I do credit Twitter (and the people on Twitter who supported me) for helping me weather that storm. I’ll never forget any of you.

At the same time, I was an ignorant autism parent in denial about the recent diagnosis of my son. The autism community on Twitter was robust and I drew from experiences and advice from other autism parents who I grew to respect and love. I learned to distinguish conspiracy from fact. Despite the daily grief we endured daily from the schools and the neighborhood, I learned that autism is not disorder . In fact, it’s brilliance packaged unconventionally. I accepted the diagnosis and, based on recommendations from the Twitter Autism community, got him enrolled in one of the best programs in the world. He remains enrolled today when he’s not thriving in public High School.

Thank you, Twitter, for this gift.

Later on, my older son’s Army Reserve unit was activated and he spent over a year in Afghanistan. The support of Veterans and other army families during that time was priceless. Tweeting about it and interacting with amazing people helped keep me from breaking down in front of people IRL. Thank you, Twitter.

Phase 4 - Activism

As stability returned to my life, I swore that I would fight for the rest of my life to make sure that my kids never have to live without a social safety net. I always leaned left but was apathetic about everything but macroeconomics. My ignorance on Healthcare embarrassed me. I left a big stable company where I was doing well for my startup dream while my wife recovered from heart surgery and just when my youngest was diagnosed with autism.

You don’t take entrepreneurial risks in America unless you’re already independently wealthy, Stupid!

American Dream, My Ass.

Realizing that I was a whisker away from homelessness even though I was pretty close to the 1% myself was a wakeup call. Without going into a diatribe about wealth inequality or a rant against Citizens United here, it became obvious we were a growing Oligarchy and the rest of us were deemed Expendable so I picked up the handle ExpendableClass (later shortened to TheXclass. I wanted to be involved on the ground while working around my horrific travel schedule. Occupy Wall Street was the perfect movement and changed my life. I was traveling to New York on business, weekly, and spent all of my downtime at Zuccoti Park - in my business attire. Learned all about the events and details on Twitter - even ran one of their accounts for awhile. Marched around avoiding arrest with people I met on Twitter. Never got kettled. And the experience of speaking with the young activists and police, alike, was exhilarating. Also managed to visit encampments in 5 other cities-all by learning about locations and agendas from local Tweeps. Tweeted about it the entire time. Sadly, I lost the history and most pictures when TheXclass was eventually banned. But the memories remain. The movement was crushed but I’m convinced that Bernie Sanders was the first #OWS Presidential Candidate-not a Dem, for sure.

Thank you, Twitter, for facilitating my opportunity to be involved in something so historic on the ground.

Phase 5 - A Following Builds

All of sudden my follower count began to spike. I never considered this dynamic but now, every tweet was met with replies -particularly from trolls. The topic was irrelevant. Economics, Obamacare, abortion, public education, racism, baseball. Interesting threads and High Controversy followed almost every time I tweeted words in that box. Then Aurora and Sandy Hook happened. Guns, guns, and more guns. Tweeting on a certain hashtag was met with death threats and doxxing by some of the worst that humanity has to offer. I definitely enjoyed commenting in ways to rattle the LIBERTY!!! coalition up to the point of abuse of me and far worse, my friends. Battling the gun nuts always brought in the racists, misogynists, and homophobes. Most were the same exact people. I’ll always admire the Moms Demand Action team for their courage on the ground. Absolute heroes who will win, in the end. I had the distinct honor to get to know some of them quite well and I’m a far better person for it.

Thank you, Twitter.

Phase 6 - A Following Collapses

Yes, the 2016 election cycle was toxic for everyone. The ‘sides’ that were firmly established began to break down into tribalism as allies began to turn on each other. Social Media, just as it instantaneously formed such powerful virtually communities, was extremely efficient at forging a large number of echo chambers fueled by propaganda. I’m not here to debate if the Consolidation of Corporate Power or Putin is responsible for sowing the seeds of discord, but Twitter, in particular, expedited the process and amplified the toxic interference through Group DM rooms and unlimited thread sizes. These are laboratories for Groupthink, Gossip, and Dogpiling.

It’s destroying the raw individual bonding that made the platform so energizing. Small disagreements no longer spark vigorous dialog that makes everyone smarter. It’s been replaced by the villain/victim mentality of tribal warfare. It’s always good to mock a racist with your friends but when friends have quarrels, everyone must choose sides and build High Drama that divides the sides into ever shrinking gangs with mentalities similar to High School cliques.

Intellectual discourse is going extinct and replaced by avenging hurt feelings, incessant intra-ideology trolling, ostracization, and mass reporting campaigns. Those are all forms of censorship, which everyone says they oppose. My original account was banned this year along with three others. Watch before you tweet? Nah, that’s for real life.

Sadly, Twitter is now exhibiting the same patterns that made me leave Facebook years ago.

Phase 7- Flock Well or SCRAM

I don’t flock well and, paradoxically, I’m not alone. As a whole, this character trait (or flaw), has served me well. I’ve seen Twitter ‘evolve’ from a platform that encouraged raw individual thought into all out tribal warfare. Good Vs Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil, etc.

I know longer have anything useful to add to Twitter. The experience adds to my anxiety level instead of serving as a stress reliever. I’m trying out Mastodon (sparsely populated) and Gab.Ai (almost exclusively Nazis) but if that doesn’t emerge, then I’ll move on.

Am I just jaded? Cynical? Cranky? Maybe Twitter hadn’t really changed. Maybe I have. I’m not discounting this possibility.

I’ve made concerted efforts to permanently quit Twitter 5 times this year but I feel like I owe it to Twitter to stick around. I honestly believe it saved my life and contributed to the well being of those around me.

I should add that, because of Twitter, dormant attributes that I suppressed since the last millenium were revived. I was existing in survival mode and wasn’t even aware of it. When you’re numb inside, you miss out on so much living. Thank you for that special gift. You’ll never be forgotten (you know who you are).

I now have a relatively stable life and, in many respects, I am the luckiest man in the world. But I realized that I have reached the end of my long Twitter Lifecycle and, this time, I’m committed to making my exit permanent even though I recognize that this might not hold.

And, to those I’ve grown close to over the years, I’ll always be your X.

Take care.